More testimony expected in yogurt shop murder trial

Published: Friday, May 11, 2001

Associated Press

AUSTIN {AP} A convicted serial killer's name has surfaced in the capital murder trial of a man accused in the yogurt shop slayings.

The defense lawyer for Robert Springsteen IV, who is charged with the slaying of 13-year-old Amy Ayers, said Thursday that his client was innocent, referring instead to a "predator driving the streets and alleys of Austin" in 1991, when Ayers and three other teen-agers were found slain.

Lawyer Joe James Sawyer did not name the predator. But Kenneth Allen McDuff abducted Colleen Reed from a downtown Austin car wash on Dec. 29, 1991, only 23 days after Ayers, Eliza Thomas and sisters Jennifer and Sarah Harbison were killed at the North Austin shop.

Anonymous sources told Austin television station KVUE on Thursday night that McDuff confessed to the yogurt shop slayings on Nov. 17, 1998, the day he was executed.

Officials had earlier speculated that the paroled killer may have been involved. But law officers had said then that McDuff was executed in November 1998 without shedding any light on the yogurt shop case.

Investigators didn't believe McDuff's confession, according to KVUE, because he got key details wrong in the case. Shortly after McDuff's execution, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Glen Castlebury, told reporters that investigators had grilled McDuff for hours and were satisfied that he had no more information about other crimes.

"I have never heard that said about McDuff," Castlebury told the Austin American-Statesman on Thursday, responding to the report of a confession to the yogurt shop killings.

Judge Mike Lynch said he would allow Sawyer to present two false confessions to jurors during the yogurt slayings trial.

The yogurt shop's manager testified Thursday about how she learned of the killings. Reece Price was in tears as she described being on vacation, before getting a call from Austin police and returning to the store to try to help identify the bodies.

Ayers, Eliza Hope Thomas, 17, and sisters Jennifer and Sarah Harbison, ages 17 and 15 were bound and gagged and shot in the head. The store was then set on fire.